Lesson: Introduction to the Study of English Language

Objective:
1. To introduce the importance of mastering English Language
2. To be able to understand strategies in developing reading skills

Why do we study English Language?

1. Standard English is used in academic, corporate and government

communication.

2. English is the world’s lingua franca. It is used all over the planet.

Lingua franca means a language that is adopted as a common language between

speakers whose native languages are different.

How do we develop English Language?

Four Macro Skills

1. Listening
2. Speaking
3. Reading
4. Writing

READING SKILLS

There are different types of readers

1. A learner who simply doesn't have a lot of knowledge about reading. A reader
who lacks reading skill.
2. A learner's who do not connect reading with active strategies, with movement and 
with the need to actually engage a text. 
3. A learner who's love of technology and self, prevents him from doing anything except
staying current on social media.

1st Learner: Reader who lacks reading skills

This learner may be engaged, diligent, and willing to learn, but simply doesn't have
the information necessary to be a successful reader.

Reasons:

1. Lack of decoding skills/Automatic recognition skills

Strategy:
  Learn Phonic rules: Phonics refers to a method of teaching learners to read
by connecting sounds with letters or groups of letters.

2. Lack of vocabulary and structural knowledge

Strategy:

 Teach readers to identify vocabulary and simple sentence structure, nouns,

verb, adverb, participles and so forth.

3. Lack of knowledge in discourse and genre

Strategy:

 Teaching learners to be aware of how different genres are written. It will

gives them more confidence to read the genres and to predict what will
happen next.

4. Lack of world knowledge

Strategy:

 Teach world knowlege. A knowledge of anything and everything helps

students to read. The more they know about the world, the greater their
capacity at prediction

Why prediction?

Good readers are good at making predictions. Good readers use semantic cues to
help them understand the text. A semantic cue is a clue that helps a reader follow
the story. The clue has something to do with meaning, and can often be derived
from an understanding of the word's relationships to the outside world.

5. Lack of Reading strategies

Strategy:

Teach the reader reading strategies such as rereading, scanning for information, look
up words in a dictionary, ask questions to a classmate/colleague, compare
information from the story with information elsewhere, and form opinions and think
critically about the truthfulness of what they read.

2nd Learner: Reader who fails to see reading as interactive.

These learners think that reading is just a solitary activity. Learners should be
engaged not only with a text but with others around them as well. Reading is like an
active sport. It involves your mind and the mind of the writer interacting with each
other. It involves you asking questions, predicting, thinking about the text. And
evaluating what you think about the reader's ideas

Strategy: Teach active reading by using pre-reading, reading, and post reading

activities.

1. Pre-reading activities might include:

 have you ever questions
 providing background information
 asking students to predict.
 involve pre-teaching vocabulary
 Showing pictures
 Telling personal story

2. Reading activities might include:

 Taking notes
 Highlighting
 Stopping to discuss with the other classmates
 Inviting other students to read in group
 Teachers asking questions

3. Post reading activities might include:

 Application
 Evaluation
 Analysation

3rd Learner: A learner who's love of technology and self, prevents him from doing
anything except staying current on social media/ the unengaged learner.

These learner just simply don’t care about reading

Strategy: Teacher must need to piqued the learner’s interest.

1. Immediacy - By immediacy, we mean that you focus on the here and now, on the
context that the learners themselves are most familiar with, themselves. In this
strategy, teachers can use language experience approach which demonstrates that
reading selections that are generated from life experiences of the students are more
interesting and engaging.
2. Autonomy - By autonomy, we mean that you allow students to find literature that
reflects  their current interests and ideas. You are allowing, at times, your students
to explore on their own and  find items of high interest. 
3. Future authenticity - By authenticity, we mean that the readings that you give the
students can and should come from the real world whenever possible. By future
authenticity, we refer to the idea that you should be giving students information that
is not only real, but that they can imagine using for future context and situations.